The right has been incredibly successful in depicting miserable public finances and pensions as the result of overpaying municipal workers, particularly unionized ones. Has anyone on the left ever undertaken an analysis of the cumulative effects on all the 'help' provided by GS and their ilk? Not just gross fraud like selling an unnecessary interest rate swap to a rube, but a comprehensive estimate all management fees and trading fees (explicit plus bid-ask spreads, etc) rang up in pursuit of the idea that beating indexes is both possible and appropriate?
In a low return world, a couple dozen basis points here and there dragging on performance ruins future value accumulations a couple decades out (unless you're considering future equity values of Goldman Sachs and the US financial sector).